Something About You
by BlackIceWitch
Summary: 6th story in Ramble On series. 2009-2010. As they struggle to find a way to beat the devil, Dean finds his thoughts turning to Ellie - and his worry escalates when the months go by with no word from her, compounding his grief and desolation at friends lost along the way and no clear path to saving Sam. No slash, no spoilers. Reviews appreciated.


**Something About You**

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><p><em>I've only known what it is to be lonely<br>When into my life, you came walking through  
>Can this be real, I don't know what I'm feeling<br>Oh, there's something about you_

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><p><em><strong>2009. Fairfield, Iowa<strong>_

_It felt so good, so perfectly right to be here, looking into her eyes, feeling the length of their bodies touching at every point–_

"Dean, wake up."

His brother's voice intruded and Dean felt a hand grip his shoulder, shaking it not all that gently.

"Wha_–_?" Dean rolled away from the irritating interruption, burying his face in the pillow and struggling to hold to the last few remnants of the dream. He didn't want to wake and face Sam, another motel room, another day of driving across the country. He wanted to stay with her, feeling her arms wrapped around him, her mouth warm and soft on his, that feeling of belonging soothing him.

"C'mon, man. You're making gross noises; I don't want to hear the details of your wet dreams. Get up."

"Go _away_."

"I'm not sitting here and listening to you." Sam got up and walked back to the table, closing the laptop. "I'm getting some coffee."

"All right. All _right_. I'm getting up." He rolled onto his back, letting go of the pillow and opening his eyes, relinquishing the last tiny piece of the dream with a long exhale.

He wasn't looking at why he was dreaming about her, just enjoying the fact that when she snuck into his sleep, Hell disappeared, the underlying fear-driven anger about Sam disappeared, his tension about Lucifer and the upcoming Apocalypse disappeared and when he woke up – or was woken up – he didn't feel like a chewed up and spat out piece of crud.

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><p>The black car rumbled over the blacktop, heading east into a rising sun. Dean leaned into the corner between the seat and the door, watching the traffic, the scenery racing past, trying to keep a particularly pesky question from rising yet again. It slid in past his defences, past the ongoing worries about hunting with his brother again, past the background tension of wondering how long it would take Zachariah to find them again.<p>

Sam was driving, hands loosely curled around the wheel, the stereo playing softly in the background.

"So, uh, what were you doing while I was gone?"

Glancing left, Dean frowned a little, sure he'd already told his brother about the last few weeks. "Hunting. Same old. Nothing special."

"On your own?"

"Some of the time. I ran into Ellie in New York." He hunched a little deeper into the corner, wondering what had prompted that ill-timed bit of honesty.

He still didn't know exactly what had happened in New York, between them. To him, he guessed, more than to her since she'd left without a backward look. They'd been hunting together, and that'd been okay, until between one moment and the next, it had felt different. He'd looked at her and really _seen_ her, in some inexplicable way. And then he'd started noticing everything. He felt a trickle of … something, he couldn't quite figure out what it was … in his gut when he thought about her. He was dreaming about her, a lot lately. Remembering the dreams he'd had about Lisa and Ben for awhile there, he wondered if these dreams would fade away the way those had, overwritten and overwhelmed by the continual stream of shit that made up most of his life.

"Oh yeah? What was she doing there?" Sam flicked a glance at his brother.

"Hunting crocottas, same as me." Dean rubbed his hand over his face, sitting straighter in the passenger seat as he realised Sam was slowly winding up for the pitch. "In Central Park."

Hunting crocottas. Talking. Having a taste of what being almost normal might feel like. Watching her. Wanting her.

He smoothed out his expression as he felt his brother's gaze brush over him again.

"So you teamed up? For one crocotta?"

There was just the faintest hint derision in Sam's voice.

"No. There were six of them."

"Six? In one area?"

"Yeah, well, it's a big city." He remembered how easy it was for them, so many people, so many hiding places. The size of the hotels and the darkness of the park.

"What happened?"

Dean shot a look at him, starting to feel nervous about the questions. "We hunted them down and killed them."

"Relax. Just asking." Sam was silent for a few minutes. "How was Ellie?"

Dean sighed. "Competent, capable. How she usually is."

He felt the look Sam gave him. "What? You know her as well as I do."

"Did she say what she'd been doing for the last few months?"

"No." That was a lie, and it'd come out easily. He's not a monster, he'd told her. She'd agreed. And raised the possibility of how far back his brother had been manipulated. None of it was anything he could talk to Sam about … not yet.

"Is that who you've been dreaming about, the last couple of weeks?"

He looked around sharply, seeing Sam's mouth tuck in at the corners, his little brother's outrageous dimples deepening.

"What? No," Dean said, scowling. "She's a friend. One of the few we have left."

And that was all she wanted to be, he thought to himself. Finding them somehow, hunting with them, or just handing off some information she'd picked up, staying for a day or two, then going again.

He leaned back against the seat, closing his eyes. That had been fine, before Manhattan. Why wasn't it fine now? Why had he heard her voice in the park, coming from the crocotta? He'd wanted her, he thought, but that had been a combination of the heat and the circumstances, hadn't it? Living close together for a couple of days? She was a beautiful woman ... and he hadn't really noticed before just how beautiful ... but it wasn't like he could pretend that she wasn't, pretend she was one of the guys when she was wearing that thin singlet, the shorts … he stopped the memories there, it was bad enough thinking about that stuff in the motel rooms, he didn't need his brother noticing any more of his reactions while they were in the car.

"Yeah? I thought you were kind of interested in her," Sam pressed, his grin getting a little wider.

Dean opened his eyes and looked at him flatly. "No."

"Uh huh. You don't want to talk about it?"

Deciding that silence was the only way Sam'd drop it, Dean turned to look out the window. Even if he'd wanted to talk about it – which he didn't, at all – he had no fucking idea of what to say.

The silence lasted about five minutes. "So—" Sam said, glancing at Dean again. "—what's with this job?

He forced every thought out of his head and gestured to the clippings on the seat between them. "Dude suffers a head-on collision in a parked car? I'd say that's worth checking out."

"Yeah, definitely," Sam agreed, glancing at the newspapers. "Uh, but, uh, we got bigger problems, don't you think?"

The amount of things they hadn't talked about – the things that they'd been through, done, thought, felt – had been circumvented just like this, Dean thought.

"I'm sure the apocalypse'll still be there when we get back," he told his brother, keeping the edge out of his voice.

"Right, yeah," Sam said, nodding. "But I mean, if—if the Colt is really out there somewhere—"

And with the Colt again. "Hey, we've been looking for three weeks, we got jack."

"Okay."

His little brother's attempts to keep things smooth and calm and even were beginning to grate. He understood the impulse, and he was glad that Sam saw the need, but it didn't change anything. Didn't … improve … anything. Just made him feel like he was being … handled.

"But Dean...I mean, if we're gonna—ice the Devil—" Sam continued, throwing another checking glance his way.

"This is what we're doing!" Dean snapped. Christ, he didn't need this. "Okay? End of discussion."

He heard the long exhale from the driver's seat, caught the flash of disappointment in Sam's face as he turned back to look at the road and grimaced inwardly. He wasn't dealing with any of this the way he'd thought he would. The way he'd imagined it after Ellie had left. Why was it so easy to talk through this crap with her, and it seemed to impossible to stay calm with Sam?

"It's just that this is our first real case, back at it together," he said, his tone slightly apologetic, not enough to be called on. "You know? I-I think we ought to ease into it, put the training wheels back on."

"So you think I need training wheels?" Sam asked tightly.

Dean closed his eyes for a second, then turned to look at him. "No. _We_," he empahsised, slowly and carefully. "_We_ need training wheels, you and me. As a team. Okay?"

They were both doing it, he thought. Talking to each other as if either could explode at any second. Sam'd sounded relieved when he'd called. He'd been relieved when they'd arranged the meeting place. Where'd that gone?

He saw Sam's fingers ease their grip on the wheel as he nodded, saw the hair-trigger tension slip a little bit from his shoulders. It'd gotten harder and harder as the years and mistakes and outright catastrophes had gotten worse. Secrets and lies. All the time. Not even wanting to ask, anymore, in case he found out something worse than he already thought. Sam'd tried to apologise, but it hadn't helped. Somehow, it'd made it worse.

_Can you live with yourself if Sam does need your help and you're not there?_

He couldn't. He didn't know how to resolve what he felt, what he thought, what he knew into a solid plan.

"Man, I really want this to be a fresh start, you know?" he said slowly to Sam, making a vague gesture. "For the both of us."

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><p><em><strong>2009. Alliance, Nebraska<strong>_

The two lane blacktop stretched ahead in the darkness, the headlights picking out the faded white lines to either side of the car. Dean drove automatically, thinking about the boy who could mould reality with a thought. Cas had been worried, more so after he'd been turned into a three inch tall action figure. If the devil found Jesse, or any of the demons, the world could literally change overnight – or in an eyeblink. He realised that they could have changed it too. _No such things as demons, Jesse. No such thing as the Devil_. Would it have worked? Too late now.

"Think Jesse will be able to stay under the angel and demon radar?" He glanced at his brother, hunched in the passenger seat, going through pages of notes.

"I don't know," Sam's voice was quiet. "Depends on whether or not he wants to, I guess."

"Yeah."

"I tried to get hold of Ellie yesterday, to get her ideas on it." Sam sat up, running a hand through his hair. "Couldn't get through."

"Uh, no signal or just to voicemail?"

"Nothing. When did she go to Alaska?" Sam pulled out his phone.

"About three, four weeks ago." Dean frowned. It seemed longer. And at the same time, shorter.

"What was she going up there for?" He dialled the number and listened.

"I don't know. She said she was going to help out a friend."

"Still nothing. Maybe she had to ditch the account." Sam shrugged and put the phone away.

"Why did you want Ellie's take on Jesse?"

"Oh, um, when we saw her in Chicago, after that job for the seal, we were talking about the hierarchies in Hell and she knew a lot about the … I don't know what you'd call it exactly, the politics of the higher power demons?"

"She did?"

"Yeah. Said she'd been doing research in the demonologies for a case she was working on."

"Huh." He shook his head slightly, every time he turned around there was something else he didn't know about her. She didn't volunteer information readily, although if he asked, she would tell him.

"Yeah, I thought she might have read or heard something about the anti-Christ aspects of it, might have known how to get through to him." Sam leaned back against the door. "Bobby said that she clued him to the half-breed stuff."

Dean frowned. Didn't anyone ever think to tell him things like this? He heard Sam's long exhale, and realised that his brother was settling down to sleep. He felt that uncomfortable catch in his chest again. As if he'd missed a breath, or his heart had missed a beat. What was _that_ supposed to mean?

The headlights lit up the road, the lines bright and the rest an unrelieved black. Under the soft roar of the engine, the tyres drummed along the dry asphalt, the noise utterly familiar and soothing to him, so many miles had gone under those wheels, all of his life.

He missed her.

It was not an easy thing to admit to, he realised with a soft exhale, but he since New York, he'd missed talking to her, listening to her, watching her. That recognition didn't help and brought an impatient shake of his head. It wasn't like they'd spent that much time together, with the way hunting was, most of the time they were on opposite sides of the country. But when she was around, he just felt … different … he thought. Hopeful. As if there were solutions to the problems, not just more problems, piling up faster than he and Sam could deal with them. He rubbed his temple. Where had that come from? Hope wasn't in his usual repertoire. But the feeling remained, the underlying sense of certainty remained. Somehow without trying, he felt more like himself when she was there.

* * *

><p><em><strong>2009. Vermilion, Ohio<strong>_

"A demon has the Colt?" Dean felt his grip tighten on the wheel and made an effort to loosen it.

"Looks like." Sam shrugged. "Chuck doesn't know where he is. We'll need Cas' help for this, I think."

"We'll need more than Cas. What'd Chuck call him? King of the Crossroads? So he's some big wheel down in Hell?" He glanced sideways.

"I guess so." Sam pulled out his phone and dialled a number.

"Don't bother. I already tried her. Still nothing on that phone." He chewed the inside of his lip, the side that Sam couldn't see. He wondered if something had gone wrong on the job in Alaska. They'd never find out if it had. Hunters didn't make the obits. She'd just be gone.

"Bobby might have another number –" Sam looked down at the phone again.

"Tried that too. He's got three. One is going to voicemail. One has been cancelled. The other one is the one we have."

Sam heard the slight edge in his voice. "She'll be okay. Just a glitch or something."

"Yeah." He didn't believe that. He wanted to, but he didn't. For the last couple of weeks, he'd had a low-grade bad feeling, somewhere in the back of his mind. It didn't seem to have anything to do with them. It felt very much like the feeling he'd had when they'd been waiting in the church in Illinois. Waiting for Ellie.

He took the turn to Dayton, forcing himself to consider the here and now. "Better give Ellen a call. We might need their help. We'll call Cas from Bobby's."

Sam nodded and started making calls.

The Colt. The one thing that might be able to help with their current situation and a fucking demon had it. He felt a sharp jab of anger at Bela, a ghostly and meaningless jab. He knew where she was and that knowledge chilled the anger out of existence.

Ellie might've known about the demon. The thought slid in unobtrusively, bringing back that unsettled feeling, a mix of worry and formless tension, tangled inextricably with a restless sense of time running out that he couldn't make heads or tails of.

He couldn't nail that feeling. Couldn't pinpoint a reason for the way it set his teeth on edge. He found himself arguing with her, in his head, sometimes. That was weird, something he tried to stop. He did it sometimes with his father, imagining John Winchester's reactions to what he was thinking or planning. He didn't need to argue with anyone else over his decisions.

"Ellen's calling Jo," Sam said and Dean nodded, a vague idea occurring to him as to how he could use their help.

"Anyone else?"

"Bobby said no," his brother told him, some unease in Sam's voice making him flick a sideways glance at the passenger seat. Catching the look, Sam's nose wrinkled up. "He said that the less people get involved in this, the better."

He couldn't argue with that. He wanted to ask Sam if Bobby'd mentioned any contact with Ellie but he couldn't make the words come out. Sam's weird radar was already sharp on that point, and he didn't need another round of questions about her.

In the past, months sometimes went by without them seeing or hearing from her. She was a competent hunter. He knew that. It didn't help him to shake the persistent, formless worry at the back of his mind. He'd learned to listen to those feelings after Illinois. Not that it had helped much in the general scheme of things. But he'd learned.

"How d'you want to handle this?" Sam asked.

Dean shook his head. "Figure it out as we go."

He felt his brother's quizzical look and shrugged. Until they got a look at the place, there wasn't much planning to be done.

_You want to go in, all guns blazing? How 'bout we try it my way to start, and then use that as Plan B?_

He'd bristled at the laughter that had been lurking in her eyes when she'd said that, admitting unwillingly that her way had worked better, at the time. She thought around the edges, all the time, and he'd never seen her careless, never seen her forget for a moment what they were hunting or who they were.

She was one of the very few people he shouldn't've been worried about, he thought with a slight scowl.

"What?"

"Nothin'," he told his brother uncomfortably. It was nothing, he reminded himself as Sam gave a disbelieving snort and turned back to the window. Just a feeling. Just a bunch of memories he couldn't make sense of that kept intruding into what he was supposed to be thinking about, what he needed to be thinking about.

He kept seeing her, the way she'd been when they'd freed Travis from the demons, bloody and bruised, the determination in her eyes as she'd reset his shoulder, the calm acceptance in her face as they'd talked of having hostages to fortune, people who could be used against them and whether the hunting life was worth it. He'd asked her if she wanted a family, love, he remembered. She told him that she was looking for someone who could see past the things she hid away.

He didn't know why those moments, and all the others, wouldn't leave him alone. Only that not a day went by without a thought of her, without wondering if she was alive, alright, and less frequently but more disturbingly, what it would be like if she was here, with him, what they might be like together.

Those thoughts were a distraction, a burden he didn't need. When Lisa had made her offer, he'd turned away, reluctantly, he knew, but even without the threat of Hell hanging over him, he'd never gone back. He'd wondered, sometimes, what it would be like to have someone there, someone who knew him, but his own innate honesty prevented him from lying to himself about her. She didn't know and he would never be able to tell her … would never _want_ to tell her, he amended, the scowl deepening. Her life wasn't his. It was just impossible. He hadn't felt this churning mix of emotions then. He hadn't felt the possibility of having a relationship with someone, staying with them, being with them, knowing them.

_Look, it sucks, but in a job like this, you can't get close to people, period._

The memory of telling Sam that brought a humourless twitch to one side of his mouth. He'd thought he was so fucking clear back then, thought he'd resigned himself to not wanting anyone, never thinking to have anything more than a night's release, a few hours of fun to wash away the pain and tension that lived like a second skin over him since he'd been old enough to know what they did.

Cassie had broken through that. He shook his head slightly at the memory. He'd thought he couldn't live without her. When he'd seen her again, when they'd been together again, he'd slowly recognised it'd been nothing more than a wishful dream, a lightning storm that had swept them up and thrown them down, their lives, their dreams, their realities too different to ever find a place that met.

There was something about Ellie that was different from any woman he'd known. Not just the obvious things, being a hunter, knowing the life, knowing about his life, but something deeper, something that he couldn't see but couldn't let go. She knew him, in some way that he hadn't been able to work out. She knew more than just what he'd told her, knew how his mind worked, knew what he was feeling, knew when he wanted to talk, and when he needed silence, when he needed comfort and when he needed the truth, unvarnished, and in his face. Sam didn't even know him that well. No one did.

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><p><em><strong>2009. Sioux Falls, South Dakota.<strong>_

He'd watched the photograph burn around the edges, the centre getting lighter and lighter until it turned to ash and fell to pieces onto the grate. Gone.

Without looking at Bobby or Sam, Dean'd left the house, going out into the yard and staring at the sky, his throat and chest tight and his grief locked up in his heart. Their deaths were on him. He'd asked them to help. And they'd come. And they were dead.

He couldn't talk to either of the men in the house. Some of that was because they bore their own burdens of what had happened. Some of it was because he couldn't let things loose anymore, couldn't talk about his fear and his doubts out loud anymore. It tore down the walls he'd spent so much time building to hold everything back.

But some of it came down to fear … he didn't trust Sam the same way anymore … maybe that would never change now, he didn't know. Too many times things had come back at him from his brother. And no matter that he knew Sam had his back, he didn't talk to Sam about the things that scared him anymore. Didn't – couldn't - tell him about the pain and the guilt and the shame.

He walked to the car, sitting on the hood and staring into the blackness. Too many people had died. The only reason Bobby hadn't been with them, was his legs. He knew that had been hard on the man, but hey, he was thankful for small favours. He thought it would be better if he and Sam just kept away from everyone. At least that way no one else could dragged into their ongoing insanity, freeing the devil and bringing the Apocalypse down on earth and caught between Heaven and Hell like a couple of rabbits transfixed in the headlights of the oncoming juggernaut.

He felt the tightness growing in his chest, becoming unbearable. _Time for a drink_. When he'd gotten out of Hell, he hadn't felt that need so much. Until the nightmares had become daymares, at least. Everything that had happened since was overloading his ability to deal. Ellen and Jo's lives seemed just wasted. Thrown away for nothing. The Colt had never been able to kill Lucifer. And lying on that field, in the grey fog between being awake and drifting into unconsciousness, he'd wished that death would come for him too, because he couldn't face the fact that another plan had gone to hell, and taken two more friends with it.

He felt a longing for something, rising in him, past the grief and the guilt, so strong that it made him shake, but he didn't know what it was. When he closed his eyes, the image that rose against the blackness was familiar and edged about with a grey formless worry.

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><p><em><strong>2009. Patterson, New York<strong>_

"_One day, Dean, you're going to want to have a family." His father had looked at him from the table where he was cleaning the shotguns. Dean's mouth had curled into a disbelieving smile._

"_C'mon, get outta here." He'd laughed. "That's Sam you're thinking of, Dad, not me."_

_John had smiled too, a knowing smile. "God, that sounds like a bet I'd like to take up."_

"_If either of us had any money that would make it worthwhile, I would too."_

"_Doesn't matter if you believe it or not. You're your mother's son. It'll happen." He bent his head over the gun again, leaving his son staring at him, unsure if his father had meant that as a compliment or not._

_They didn't often talk about the future. Or the past. Just keeping it simple, in the present, the hunt, the research, the cars, the next town. Conversations that ventured outside that known territory were full of mines … old ones, not so old ones, unexploded and hidden beneath seemingly innocuous memories. It was better to stay inside the tacit boundary._

He remembered that conversation now, as they drove south and west, passing by Patterson. It had been just before his father had disappeared, just before he'd gone to see Sam. He hadn't believed it until he met up with Lisa again, and saw her son. Then he'd realised it was true, but it was already too late to do anything about it. Sam's powers, his deal … things had happened and there was no way back.

He stared at the road, trying to remember how exactly he'd felt about Lisa. He liked her, of course, that hadn't changed. He'd been swinging wildly between terror and hope at the possibility that Ben could be his son. When she'd told him he wasn't, he'd been disappointed and, at the same time, grateful. He'd been on the road to Hell. The last thing he wanted to worry about was a son, growing up without a father. But from that point, he'd thought about them when he thought of family. Maybe because they were the only ones he knew.

There hadn't been a time when he couldn't stop thinking about her. There hadn't been a time where she'd filled his nights and kept slipping effortlessly into his thoughts through the days. He couldn't keep it straight anymore, what he wanted, what he was thinking. That background worry had gotten stronger, sometimes waking him in the middle of the night with a sense of certainty that something was wrong and every call made him jump, a little, with the idea that it might be Ellie. He wanted to see her. He felt nervous about seeing her. He wanted to know her, and yeah, he wanted more than a friendship, but he couldn't imagine asking for more, couldn't work out what it was that he wanted, what he thought he would be offering.

Four months had gone by since New York. No one else had heard from her either. No job, no matter how hard, dragged on this long and had a good ending. Sam and Bobby both thought she might be dead, although neither had said it out loud, not yet, not to him. He couldn't believe that. He wouldn't believe it. He'd replayed all their conversations in his head, and the one thing that came through over and over again was how well-prepared she was, how careful to cover every eventuality. It was unthinkable that she could die. He was kidding himself, he knew. Anyone could die, no matter how good they were. Sometimes luck ran out.

In his mind, he went over his memories of her. From the first time he'd seen her, a ten year old, barely conscious under the bookcase after the elemental had been through her house. Meeting her at the roadhouse, the sense of familiarity there but unable to pinpoint the memory until later. Hearing the crash of the window as she'd swung through, his vision blurred and and pain-filled and hardly comprehending what he was seeing. She'd been in motion the whole time, in the building where he'd been held as bait in a trap for Sam.

The night they'd hunted demons. He'd known for some time that his father had sacrificed himself, but he hadn't dealt with it, burying it under other losses, other guilts. He'd been broken that night. He remembered asking her if anyone had ever died for her and being unsurprised and at the same time shocked when she'd told him another piece of her past. How he'd turned to her and that had been ... a shock in itself, letting that vulnerability become visible, showing someone his pain. He'd needed some contact, some kind of comfort, and it had felt ... safe ... to trust her. It had felt right. He'd wanted more then. She'd drawn away.

Her relief and excitement, shining in her face when she'd told him how they could break his contract, and the way he'd felt when Bobby had called to tell them she'd been killed in a car crash on her way to meet them. He'd been devastated when he'd realised that his hope of getting out of going to Hell was gone, but beyond that was a sense of loss that had speared through him, the loss of something he'd never really had, and hadn't realised he'd wanted until the possibility was gone.

He drew in a deep breath, deliberately loosening his hands where they curled around the wheel. Memory lane wasn't a place he visited much. He tried not to look back. But he needed to now.

Chicago. The way she'd looked at him, thrown her arms around him in the apartment they'd broken into, to save a boy who was also a seal to the devil's cage, her eyes filled with an emotion he hadn't been able to recognise. It had been like seeing a ghost. He'd mourned her and pushed aside the reoccurring thoughts of her with sadness. She'd known he was alive, and out of Hell. She hadn't been surprised, only glad to see him. And later on that disaster-ridden hunt, the calm of her face looking up at him, her head resting against his thigh, telling him not to waste his energy on worrying as they'd waited for the demons to get around to dealing with them. The prosaic tone in her voice when she told them that Rachel and the boy were safe, that she'd had a backup plan the whole time but hadn't told them because what they didn't know couldn't be tortured out of them. He smiled at the memory of Sam's face when he'd heard that.

Colorado and Arizona. Talking to her about Lisa and Ben. Maine. Los Angeles and listening to her explaining a bit about the gates. The haunting in Michigan that had taken three days, the three of them trapped in the house the whole time, taking shifts for sleep. And then Manhattan.

That first sight of her in the club, before they'd met up. His nerves had jumped from …what? Nervousness? Excitement? Anticipation? All of the above, when he'd seen her there. The feel of her body, pressed tightly against his in the heat of a peak-hour subway ride in a New York summer, and the scent of her rising around him; the way he'd been painfully, acutely aware of her, lying a few feet from him in the hot nights in the hotel room; the crocotta calling out to him with her voice, filled with pain and anguish, his response to that call had been all emotion, and he hadn't known why.

He hadn't found it easy to talk to people since Cas had pulled him from Hell. He thought it was the memories, the things he'd done, the things he'd felt, but lately he'd realised that it was as much a lack of curiosity about people as the fact that he couldn't reciprocate very well with normal conversation, there were too many things he couldn't talk about. Ellie had been the exception. He'd wanted to know her, how she felt about things, what she thought of the life. And when she asked him what he felt, he'd found he could answer, sometimes surprising himself with those answers, not even knowing what he'd been thinking until it was coming out of his mouth. More surprising was the recognition that he wanted her to know him. She didn't judge him. And she told him the truth, expecting the same from him. It had a funny effect on him, he couldn't lie convincingly to her to save his life.

That feeling, that yearning that came when he thought of her, when he worried about where she was … he knew what it was now. He wanted to see her. Wanted to be with her and know she was okay. He wanted a lot more than that, but he thought he could be satisfied with that much.

She couldn't be dead. He pushed that thought away.

* * *

><p><em><strong>2010. Oklahoma.<strong>_

Michael had been damned smug, as if his surrender was a done deal, Dean thought irritably. What had the archangel known that he didn't? That time was on their side? That given his record in Hell, he'd break and give up?

He rolled over onto his side, pounding the pillow with the edge of his hand. He wouldn't give up on this. They couldn't let Lucifer win. But they couldn't let the two brothers slog it out either, not with half the planet at risk of the fallout. He couldn't think of any other options, but they had to be there, there had to be some other choice.

They were going in circles. And they'd lost the Colt. Cas had taken them back to Carthage a week after the failed attempt, after the devil had done his business and left town, to retrieve their vehicles. They'd tracked all around the field, looked under every pile of dirt and every shrub and bush and leaf, but the Colt had been gone.

So they had nothing. They would head out to Millicent tomorrow. Sam had found a case that was truly weird, even among the weirdnesses they'd been experiencing lately. A couple who'd eaten other, alive. He shook his head slightly.

He didn't want to think about weirdness right now. He didn't want to think about archangels or the devil or how the hell he and his brother were supposed to defeat them. He was bone-tired. He wanted to sleep. He let out his breath softly against the pillow. His nightmares had disappeared for a while. Or been pushed aside. He spent his sleeping hours with Ellie and woke with a wet stain beside him in the mornings. Sam hadn't complained lately so maybe he'd gotten quieter. Beat the hell out of waking at two, soaked in sweat, his heart rat-a-tatting against his ribs and reaching for the bottle. Dreams were only supposed to last a few minutes, but these seemed to last him all night.

He closed his eyes and thought about her. He'd been lonely his whole life, he thought sometimes. Wanting to be close to someone, unable to make that move, finally deciding that he couldn't keep wanting it, that he had to be stronger, had to cut people out before it was too late. He didn't feel that loneliness when he thought about Ellie. It vanished the same way that his doubts did. And he'd never thought of cutting her out.

* * *

><p><em>He frowned as he looked up at the sheer mountainside, the grey rock jagged and the milder slopes covered in scree. A few determined pines clung to the sides, with massive snowdrifts against them, and the sharp, biting cold of early winter in the northern latitudes bit into him, making it hard to draw a deep breath.<em>

_He heard a rustling noise above him and looked up, seeing a flash of red between the grey rock and the dark pine needles. Ellie. She came down the side of the slope, one leg drawn up under her, the other held awkwardly out straight, splinted roughly around the thigh, her hands catching at the rock and tree limbs as she slid slowly down, trying to slow her descent. He heard a heavier crash in the brush above her, and saw the grey and brown matted fur through the tree trunks, the grunting of the Kodiak as it tried to find a way down after the woman. Ellie ignored it, her attention solely focussed on the way down. The ravine was steep for miles in both directions, barely a rabbit path along the stream that filled the bottom. The bear would have to travel if it wanted to find a better way to get to her._

_He watched her reach the bottom, crouching on the loose moraine that lined the stream banks, panting softly. She lifted her face to look at the stream and he saw the angry red line of a gash over her temple, her cheekbones and brows pressing against her skin, the gauntness of her face with its dark hollows and bruises. God, Ellie … what happened to you? His cry was silent, locked inside himself._

_She got to her feet slowly, and he saw the thick length of wood she'd cut to use as a crutch. She couldn't put weight on the leg that was splinted. Broken? Fractured? As she straightened he saw the rents in her clothing, blood stained edges. She pulled her jacket around herself, shivering in the cold, and started to move slowly downstream, testing her footing with the crutch before committing herself to it. Her backpack hung limply from her shoulder._

_Far above them both now, the bear growled and muttered then crashed off into the trees. He looked at the sky, seeing the cloud gathering overhead, grey and charcoal and heavy with snow. He followed her down the stream bank slowly; afraid of what he would see next._

_Two bends downstream, a section of the ravine walls had become vertical, hollows and holes showing where the glacier runoff had eroded them in the past. Ellie moved more slowly now, checking each of the small entrances. A hundred yards down, she found one she liked, looking up at the sky as the first soft, large snowflakes began to fall. She pushed her crutch into the hole ahead of her and wriggled through the opening carefully, her face spasming each time she bumped the injured leg or leaned against the wounds in her side. He followed her inside, knowing that he could never have gotten in here in real life, the twisting rock tunnel was barely wide enough to let her through. In the blackness he could still see her, her face outlined in a ghostly fire as she felt around in her backpack for what she wanted._

_She drew out a small dish and a bottle, working by feel. He saw the flame of her lighter flare in the darkness and then the softer flame of the small oil lamp lit the tiny cave, shedding light and a little warmth into the close confines. She set the lamp to one side and moved her bag up, pulling leaves and roots from it and lying down stiffly. He watched her as she chewed the roots for a while, then pulled the resulting paste from her mouth, lifting her shirt front and smearing it over the gaping claw marks that ran down her side from breast to hip. He stared at them in horror. They were angry and red, seeping clear liquid and blood. The effort of coating them with the plant seemed to have exhausted her, because she lay back and closed her eyes, leaving the wounds to the open air._

He sat up in the bed, eyes wide and staring at the cracks between the curtains of the room. Already the dream was fading away, the details becoming lost. He lay back, his breathing slowing, as he fought to remember what had scared him so much … he remembered seeing snow clouds, low and heavy over a mountain ravine … Ellie's face, drawn with pain … the flicker of a flame against a bare rock wall … that was about it.

He closed his eyes again. This time she was sitting on a bank of long grass, above a wide, shallow river. He knew this, they'd been in Colorado when she'd turned up one afternoon, with a book for Sam, about folklore of Eastern Europe, he thought. They'd walked down to the river, just catching up, not talking of anything in particular.

"_Sam told me about Lisa and Ben," she'd said, smiling slightly at him, the sunlight glittering off her hair, her feet bare and in the water._

"_Sam talks too damned much." He'd sat a little behind her, looking at the water as it rose and fell over the rocks that formed the bed of the river._

"_Were you disappointed?" She picked a long blade of grass, stripping the seeds absently._

_He looked at her. Straight for the heart. Anyone else, he'd have clammed up, annoyed._

"_Yeah." He shrugged, remembering. "It was a few months before I went to Hell. And I was thinking a lot about what I'd done here, what I wanted to do."_

"_What you were leaving behind?"_

_He smiled ruefully at her accuracy. "Especially that."_

"_You're free of Hell now, Dean. You could go back, pick up again." She hadn't looked at him, looking down at the clear water around her feet instead._

"_No." He sighed and lay back in the soft grass. "Not my life. Never will be."_

"_Never say never."_

"_Unlikely then." He leaned on his elbow, looking at her. She turned, lifting a hand to shade her eyes as she looked back at him._

"_Did you love her?"_

_He couldn't see her eyes. "No. I wanted what she had, I wanted what she offered to me, a family and a life that had no monsters."_

"_That could turn into love."_

"_Could it? I thought love was about the person, not about the lifestyle." He settled back on both elbows as the memory shifted and segued into a dream finally. She got up, her habitual jeans and shirt melting into a summer dress and she walked to him, lifting her foot over him and settling down onto him, her skin warm with the sunshine, her lips sweet on his as she leaned forward and kissed him._

* * *

><p><em><strong>2010. Sioux Falls, South Dakota<strong>_

Dean leaned back against the wall, staring at the wall across the hall from him. The bottle hung loosely in one hand and he raised it, tipping a little into his mouth and closing his eyes as he swallowed, Famine's words in his mind …_one deep, dark nothing you've got there … can't fill it …_

"Let me out of here," Sam's voice was raw and desperate. "Please!" The words broken apart as he gasped behind the walls of the salt-encrusted iron room.

"Help!" His fists pounding helplessly against the door. "Help me."

Castiel looked from the door to Dean, seeing his friend's pain, unable to do anything about it. "That's not him in there. Not really."

"I know."

"Dean, Sam just has to get it out of his system. Then he'll be—"

"Listen, I just, uh...I just need to get some air." He stumbled away, trying to keep the contents of his stomach in his stomach as he climbed the stairs and wrenched open the door.

He walked down the laneway between the heaped cars, slowing and stopping as he reached his car. He looked down at the bottle, knowing that it couldn't give him any peace, couldn't take away the pain, couldn't even blur the edges any longer. He stared up at the sky, tears filling his eyes as Sam's torment continued in his mind, as loudly and as clearly as if he'd stayed there, listening to it.

He couldn't take this pain for much longer, he couldn't deal with all of it alone.

"Please ... I can't ... I need some help." He could feel that someone was listening, even if he didn't believe that he could be helped, could be saved. "Please?"

* * *

><p><strong>END<strong>


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